Which economical car for should we buy for local driving and occasional long trips to Spain?

My wife and I are looking for a car with about £20,000 cash to spend, now retired and having had cars supplied to us like Volvo, Lexus and BMW 5 series etc. during our working life. We have needs of automatic (or manual if the price is heavily affected) and satnav, which has saved many arguments when travelling long distances. Our choices start with my wife's Q3 or maybe Q5, and my choice is BMW 320d or 520d. I think the wife might win but I am finding the Q3 looks bit squashed. The UK driving can be mainly local driving, whilst once a year we drive to Costa Blanca Spain for holidays in our apartment, and need some comfort whilst travelling. As we're retired we're now also looking at economy and size for easier parking in Spain.

Asked on 20 July 2013 by GC, Northampton

Answered by Honest John

£20,000 doesn't buy an F30 320dED. It probably would buy an X1 2.0d s-drive or x-drive, but you would need to make sure it came with satnav and if used, the BMW satnav would probably only work to four digits of postcode. The same goes for the Audi satnav. If you repeatedly do short runs from cold, forget about the economy on your annual trip to Calpe (or Javea or Denia) and go for a 2.0-litre petrol turbo. That excludes the X1 and probably brings the Q3 into pre-eminence unless you consider a RAV4 2.0i Valvematic Multidrive S, though this is quite big.

Tags: automatics short journeys sat nav crossovers suvs petrol engines

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